Did I really just publish that photo?
One of the greatest times of my life was traveling through Europe for three months with three of my best friends. As you perhaps can tell by the dated photo, this was our post-college graduation backpacking trip. We were psyched.
We had been planning the trip for months..leaving some room for spontaneity, but definitely hitting certain spots and hostels/cheap hotels.
That experience was brought back to life to me while I was in New York recently. I shared a car from JFK with two young girls from Holland who were traveling across America for the summer. White knuckled in the back seat as the driver weaved in and out of the rush hour traffic, they told me their plans. They were so bright eyed and excited, it pained me to tell them the hostel they booked to spend a week in The Big Apple was in dead center…Harlem.
I realized this easily could happen to anyone, especially young foreign people who just want to find a cheap room. We relied on guide books to plan our trip, but there were still things the guidebooks left out that we tended to learn from locals. Parents – if your kids are old enough to plan a trip abroad, definitely go over their itinerary with them.
Thanks to the internet it is much easier to find any information you need about a location, and you don’t only have to take it from the professionals. There are travel blogs (ahem), and travel websites where locals or other other travelers can chime in about a hotel or location.
One that I find useful is www.virtualtourist.com. In most every city I researched on the website, there is an area to find specifics on “warnings and dangers” of various neighborhoods of your desired vacation spot. Most travel websites tell you where you should go, so it was helpful to find one that tells you where NOT to go.
But what makes this site special is that it gets really specific. For instance, it told me streets to avoid, and boundaries to stay within when walking in a neighborhood. Very useful – you can’t rely on a hotel reservationist to always give you the nitty gritty. Be prepared.
Obviously, on a macro level, www.travel.state.gov gives official U.S. travel warnings…
Things can change while you are on your trip too…. which is where flexibility comes in. Back on our trip, we were headed for Greece… but we influenced by warnings we heard so at the last minute we instead went to Ibiza. I am grateful actually…I don’t think I would have ever gone there had we not changed….
Ibiza, Spain
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain.
Travel safely.
